ANDERS MAGE PAGE 2.0

I was looking over the Sphere advancement table and was kind of ticked off. With all Spheres costing basically the same, there's nearly no distinction between the Traditions built into the system. It's not that one needs the system to make the sorts of distinctions that one should do by roleplaying, but it's nice if the system reinforces the distinctions. So, I decided to extrapolate the existing table a bit to try to represent the mindset of each Tradition a little better. As any mage knows, any given system of belief provides greater or lesser difficulty at accomplishing a task.

System

Each Tradition has primary, secondary and tertiary Spheres. It costs 5x to advance in the primary Sphere, 7x to advance in a secondary Sphere, and 9x to advance in a tertiary Sphere. Each Tradition commonly teaches the primary and secondary Spheres, although the tertiary Spheres are not unknown, just uncommon.

Tradition	Primary (5x)	Secondary (7x)	Tertiary (9x)
Akashic Brotherhood	Mind	Pr, Sp, Li, En	Fo, Ma, Ti, Co
Celestial Chorus	Prime	Sp, Li, Ti, Co	Fo, Ma, En, Mi
Cult of Ecstasy	Time	Pr, Mi, Li, Co	Fo, Ma, En, Sp
Dreamspeakers	Spirit	Pr, Mi, Ti, Li	Fo, Ma, En, Co
Euthanatos	Entropy	Pr, Li, Sp, Ti	Fo, Ma, Co, Mi
Order of Hermes	Matter *	Pr, Fo, Li, Co	Mi, Sp, En, Ti
Sons of Ether	Forces *	Pr, Ma, Li, Co	Ti, Sp, En, Mi
Verbena	Life	Pr, Mi, Sp, En	Ti, Fo, Ma, Co
Virtual Adepts	Correspondence	Pr, Fo, En, Mi	Ti, Ma, Sp, Li

Abbreviations: Mi=Mind, Pr=Prime, Sp=Spirit, Li=Life, En=Entropy, Fo=Forces, Ma=Matter, Ti=Time, Co=Correspondence

Hollow Ones and all other Orphans have all Spheres as secondary. All cost 7x to advance.

* I feel that the Sons of Ether (formerly the Electrodyne Engineers, after all) should be primary in Forces and that it makes more sense for the Order of Hermes to be primary in Matter, who seem to me to be alchemists.

This chart is not supposed to be a straightjacket, and I would certainly consider switching secondary and tertiary disciplines if it makes sense for a character. For instance, for a Dragon Scale Akashic Brother it might be more appropriate to substitute Correspondence or Forces for Spirit and one could make a good argument for some Euthanatos having Mind rather than Time. My choices in the secondary and tertiary columns were kind of arbitrary.

The chart gives slightly lower costs than the existing cost. For Tradition mages, the total bargain isn't much for someone who wants to learn lots of Spheres, but I decided to reward the Orphans a bit, giving them a slight discount representing their more flexible approach to magick. It is a lot easier for a Tradition mage to become a Master in thier Primary Sphere, but it is quite a bit more difficult to master those Spheres outside the Tradition's mindset.